A garment hanger with particular ease of use advantage when removing or hanging crew neck or turtleneck type shirts or blouses. The hanger provides an easily manipulated and intuitive mechanism for collapsing the garment support portions of the hanger, thus allowing for simple passage through the narrow neck hole of a garment. The hanger further provides an easily manipulated and intuitive mechanism for returning the folded garment support portions to their extended and supportive positions, which can be done with the hanger enveloped within a garment, thus providing an improved means for hanging some shirts or blouses without the need to feed a hanger up through the bottom opening of the garment.

The present disclosure provides a collapsible and locking clothes hanger for one-handed individuals. In at least one embodiment, a collapsible clothes hanger comprises a central hook portion including a hook element and a helical torsion spring, a first hanger arm and a second hanger arm, the helical torsion spring adapted to bias the first and the second hanger arms into an expanded position, each of the first and the second hanger arms moveable to a collapsed position, with the first hanger arm including a sliding component moveable between a first position and a second position, the sliding component including a first catch, the second hanger arm including a second catch, the first catch securely engaging the second catch in the first position, the first catch disengaging the second catch in the second position to move the first and the second hanger arms from the collapsed position to the expanded position.

An expandable garment hanger assembly has a central frame and housing assembly. An arm pair assembly with a right and left side arm portion is pivotally coupled to an interior portion of the frame and housing assembly and designed to be folded or laterally extended. The right and left side arm portions are rotatably engaged to move rotationally and simultaneously in the opposite direction. A release spring and lock assembly is disposed within the frame and housing assembly and designed to be locked when the arm pair assembly is closed. At least one depressible release assembly is coupled to the spring and lock assembly designed to release the spring and lock assembly to extend the right and left side arm portions. A right and left side arm extender portion is slidably coupled to the distal ends of the right and left side arms respectively and designed to extend or retract.

A folding hanger includes a hook extending from an upper end of a hinge pin for suspending the pin. First and second hanger arms each have proximal and distal ends and define a support surface therebetween. Each proximal end has a stop. A knuckle having a hole extends from each proximal end. The pin passes through the holes along an axis, coupling the arms and hook whereby the arms are movable between extended and folded configurations. The stops abut when the arms are extended, and are separated when folded. The hanger has a center of gravity when the arms are extended and suspended by the hook such that the axis is angled relative to vertical in a first direction and the stops bias abutting. The arms each have a center of gravity such that angular movement of the axis past an unstable equilibrium causes the arms to move toward folded.

The invention relates to a garment hanger handling device comprising a housing and a gripping tool adapted to grip and hold a garment hanger, where the gripping tool is adapted to pick up a garment hanger at a loading station, to move the garment hanger to a mounting station, and to forward the garment hanger to an unloading station, where the garment hanger handling device is provided with a linear actuator adapted to move the gripping tool in a vertical direction, where the garment hanger handling device is provided with a rotational actuator adapted to rotate the gripping tool around a vertical axis, and that the gripping tool is adapted to position the garment hanger in a predefined rotational and vertical position at the mounting station in dependency of an input signal. The advantage of the invention is that the position where a garment is applied on a garment hanger can be adapted to the length of the operator, type of hanger and garment, where the position can be adjusted individually for each mounting cycle.

The inventive subject matter provides a device being capable of hanging a cloth with minimum effort on the part of a user, and with less potential damage on item being hung. In general, the inventive hanger comprises an upper coupling, left and right arms extending laterally away from opposite sides of the upper coupling. The arms are further coupled with a lower coupling, at least one of the couplings includes a pivot that allows the lower coupling to move closer to the upper coupling, allowing the hanger to easily adapt to fit into the neck of a shirt without stretching out the neck. A biasing component biases the lower coupling away from the upper coupling, allowing the hanger to keep the shirt hanged on.

In selected examples, a garment includes an article of clothing, a processor, memory storing instructions, biometric and/or environmental sensors configurable and readable by the processor, and a short range radio frequency (RF) transceiver (e.g., a Bluetooth® transceiver). When the processor executes the instructions, it may configure the garment to establish an RF link with a communication device, enabling the processor to receive from the communication device sensor configuration information, and configure the sensors accordingly. The processor may also collect sensor data, and transmit the data over the RF link from the garment to the communication device. The communication device may be a mobile device, e.g., a smartphone/tablet. The garment may be a “master” coupled through wired/wireless links to “slave” garments, and allow the communication device to communicate with the slaves. The communication device may connect the master/slaves to various networks and other computing devices.

In selected examples, a hanger or a garment-storing enclosure couples to an electrically-powered garment, to provide electrical energy for recharging the garment's battery and operating the garment's electronics. The electrical energy may be transferred using low frequency inductive coupling or electromagnetic coupling in the radio frequency range of the spectrum. The hanger/enclosure may include a data interface to the garment, and another data interface to a Wide Area Network (WAN) or another network. Each of the data interfaces may be, e.g., a wireless RF data interface. The garment may include biometric, environmental, and other sensors for collecting data. Through the data interfaces, the hanger/enclosure may enable data flow between the garment and remote devices connected to the WAN. The garment-storing enclosure may be a portable enclosure, such as a garment travel bag. It may also be a relatively-fixed enclosure, such as a closet in an office or a dwelling.

In selected examples, a hanger couples to an electrically-powered garment, to provide electrical energy to the garment to recharge the battery of the garment. The electrical energy may be transferred from the hanger to the garment using inductive coupling. The electrical energy may also or instead be transferred using contact coupling facilitated by magnet(s) in the interfaces of the hanger system and the garment. The garment may include biometric, environmental, and other sensors to collect data. The hanger system-garment interfaces may provide for data flow between the hanger and the garment. In selected examples, a smart garment may be controlled by a smartphone or another mobile device. The smartphone may control several smart garments, which may be connected in series and/or in parallel, with one of the smart garments being a master connected to the smartphone, and the other garments being slave garments connected to the smartphone through the master.

A spring biased clothes hanger is disclosed. The folding clothes hanger includes a bar hook, a pair of adjustable length shoulder bars and an internal spring or string connectors. The combination of these elements allows the shoulder bars to bend downwardly or horizontally for placing the clothes on the hanger through the neck opening without unbuttoning the garment or stretching the neck elastic band. At least two spring connectors are coupled to the shoulder bars to then form a cross configuration. The spring connectors include clipper members which are then coupled to the bar hook for operation by a user. A user may then apply a squeezing force to the clipper members which then actuate the shoulder bars into a downward position or a compressed horizontal position.